


Collection of Tumblr Fic - July

by Nny



Series: Tumblr Fic Compilations [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Baking, Cooking, Deputy Stiles Stilinski, HSDSS, High School, Kid Fic, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Misunderstandings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Reapers, Soul Bond, Telepathic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-29
Packaged: 2018-02-07 07:12:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 5,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1889748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/pseuds/Nny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of tumblr ficlets. All requests can be left <a href="http://villainny.tumblr.com/ask">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Telepathic Soul Bond

_Luuuuke_

Derek jerked his head around hard enough to strain his shoulders, rough rope cutting in to his wrists. 

"Stiles?!"

_Shhh!_

There was a few moments silence. Except - that wasn’t right, because it had always been silent, and there was a weird quality to Stiles’ voice, directionless and resonant. It was like the difference between hearing yourself on a recording and the way you sound inside of your head. 

_Luuuke_ , it came back again, _use the fooorce_. Derek scowled against his blindfold, the folds of cloth stretched and body warm, humid with sweat, but there was suddenly a weird image in his head, dissonant and wrong. He could see himself as though from the corner of the room, could see how slumped and defeated he looked and he straightened automatically, watching himself doing it from a distance and feeling like something was straining in his brain. 

The pole he was tied to, what he’d thought was a pillar from floor to ceiling, was instead a stake driven into the unfinished earth floor and he watched himself grin from one remove, braced his legs and threw himself back against it. It took time, took a toll on his back and shoulders and what felt like a couple of ribs but after multiple impacts the pole finally gave way, crashed over backwards so he could painstakingly, _painfully_ ease himself backwards until his bound wrists slid over the top. It was a simple matter, with the added give in the rope, to pull his hands free and he shoved the blindfold up over his forehead. 

The moment of double vision disoriented him hard and fast and dizzy and he bent over and emptied his stomach, hacking and spitting. 

_Shit_ , Stiles thought at him, _sorry_. Derek lifted his head and zeroed in unerringly on the corner he’d seen himself from, saw with only his eyes, this time, the barred window and Stiles’ pale face pressed up against the unnaturally thick glass. 

_Get out of here!_ Derek thought at him, swift and vicious, and Stiles flinched back from the window. There were gentle echoes of Stiles’ hurt, his worry, like the outermost ripples from a dropped stone, and this was - shit, this was worse than Derek had thought, this was the sort of old magic that Deaton warned them away from. 

_Stiles_ , Derek thought, slow and deliberate and iron-clad, forcing all emotion to one side, _you have to stop this. I’m fine now, I can get out, you’ve got to stop whatever you did._

 _Not until we’re out of here_ , Stiles thought back, colored with frustrated worry and defiance. 

_Now, Stiles!_

There was the mental equivalent of a yelp of surprise - a wash of shock and pain and fear - and Derek let out an involuntary howl of rage and distress, hurling himself against the only visible exit, a huge heavy door on the wall opposite the window. 

Something cracked. It didn’t feel like it was the door. Derek, mindless and furious and drawn like gravity towards the distant feel of pain and fear and lightning-sparks, threw himself forward again and again. It was worth the pain when he finally heard the gunshot-crack of splitting wood, when he finally crashed through to land on hands and knees at the base of a dark staircase. 

"Stiles!" He yelled, _roared_ , unable to control his shift. He hurled himself up the stairs, the door at the top giving way in front of him like tissue paper, but he skidded to a stop at the sight of the room. 

Stiles was sprawled in a chair, the only item of furniture in the room, and the hunter who’d brought Derek here was standing, feet braced, his gun aimed directly at Stiles. 

"Move and I shoot him," the hunter said, and Derek didn’t doubt it for a second. 

"If you strike me down," Stiles said, low and pained but somehow still laughing around the edges of it, "I shall become more powerful than you can - "

 _Left_ , Stiles thought, intent and carrying with it a hundred unsaid secrets that Derek hadn’t asked for and wished he couldn’t feel. 

Stiles shoved himself sideways, Derek lunged, the gun went off in a crack of noise and pain, and as Derek pulled Stiles’ pain from across the room, used it like fuel, he felt the bond snap into place, solid and irreversible.


	2. High School

"Remind me why I’m doing this," Derek said, glaring as Stiles patted at his tie. 

"Because I refuse to do this alone," Stiles said, his heartbeat as annoyingly accelerated as it had been all day, making it impossible for Derek to work out how close this was to true. "Because there’s some kind of big bad and they always land in the locker room sooner or later. Because I refuse to go to my high school reunion as single as I was throughout the entirety of my time there. Pick one.” 

"But why _me_ ,” Derek said. 

"Muscle," Stiles answered, which stung a little. "Also you’re basically the hottest of my friends." 

There were any number of responses that would have worked there, frankly, and any one of them would have been less embarrassing. 

"We’re friends?" Derek said, a little higher pitched than he would have gone for if he’d ever intended to say that at all. 

"You’re an idiot," Stiles said, flat and frustrated and yet somehow still fond, and Derek could feel a small smile sneaking its way onto his face, entirely without his consent. Stiles leaned up and pressed his mouth against it, awkward and clumsy and warm. Derek swallowed. 

"Practice?" Stiles said, flushing pink as he pulled away. 

"So," Derek said, once he had his voice under control. "PDA?" 

"Never got the chance to make out with someone against my locker," Stiles said, and it took a second but then his eyes flicked up, met Derek’s. Derek wasn’t sure what he saw in them, wasn’t sure precisely what combination of emotions he was projecting, but there was no way it was anything other than agreement, wholehearted and a little embarrassingly happy about it. 

Stiles’ smile was beautiful. Always had been. Derek let himself mirror it. 

"So," he said. "I think maybe we need - "

"More practice?" Stiles said, and his smile turned wicked as he pulled Derek in.


	3. Proposal

_Sock drawer_ , the note says, deep-scored pencil on a background of obnoxious pink, and Derek has to take a moment. 

It’s kind of absurd after all the things they’ve lived through, after witches and darachs and trolls, oh my, it’s things like this that trip him up. Sock drawers and fruit bowls, shared laundry loads. House keys and someone else to leave notes about them. When he ever actually dared think about it he’d kind of assumed there was a solidity like the one he grew up with built into foundations, that houses carried with them enough weight that things would stop feeling so precarious. He supposes it was always a childish thought; it’s not like smoke alarms do anything to weigh houses down. 

So there are still those moments where he has to take a breath, sometimes even a Stiles-scented breath, leaned over and face pressed against pillows. Other times he goes straight to the source, buries his face in Stiles’ neck and wraps his arms around his stomach and breathes out everything buoyant. (Mostly Stiles ignores him. He’s pretty good for knowing what Derek needs.)

So Derek takes a breath, exhales, takes a couple more. Goes down to the basement, empties the dryer, pairs the socks up the way Stiles likes them even though it ruins the elastic, because these are the kind of sacrifices he’ll happily make. The drawer doesn’t open easily, catches on something as he pulls it open and he has to fish around to pull it out: a square black box. There’s an x on the corner in silver Sharpie, and whether that’s a kiss or a sign of pirate treasure is never easy to tell, with Stiles. 

It’s silver, the pale sheen of white gold. Plain and round, unworn smooth. ‘Private property’ it says on the inside, which is appalling and perfect and a memory and not quite a joke, and it makes him choke on a laugh and wheeze on his next breath, struggling to breathe under an increase in gravity. 

_Choose your own adventure_ the note in the bottom of the box says, so Derek hangs the ring off the knuckle of his thumb and drives white-knuckled to Scott’s so it won’t fall off, because he’s not putting it in place himself. 

"It’s not very romantic," Scott’s saying dubiously when he pulls up, voice underscored by the burble of a coffeemaker, "you didn’t even get to see his face." 

"He wouldn’t have wanted me to," Stiles says, unconcerned.

(He’s pretty good for knowing what Derek needs. And what Derek needs is a silver ring to match his, slightly thicker in the band but a narrower fit, and carefully engraved with an anchor.)


	4. "Can we pretend I didn't just say that?"

Derek froze, his eyes wide, his shoulders flexing where they held his weight like it was all he could do not to shove off, push away. 

"Fuck," he said, "Fuck," like this was the worst thing to ever happen to him. "Can we pretend I didn’t just say that?" 

"Sure," Stiles said, then slammed his palm into the crook of Derek’s elbow, just hard enough to buckle it, and rolled himself out from under Derek’s weight. 

"Stiles - "

Stiles made a tiny sound of triumph when he located his pants - thank god he’d resisted Derek’s advances earlier. The living room was _right there_ at the bottom of the stairs, and the door had slammed earlier; if there was someone in the house they’d be in view of whatever descended, and dignity never wore Batman boxers. 

"Stiles," Derek said, pushed up on his elbows and unzipped and shirtless and fucking _beautiful_ in the evening light. 

"If we’re pretending you didn’t say it then I guess that means it’s not true," Stiles said, hauling his shirt off a lamp and pulling it on. "And you know what? Turns out I have some pride after all." 

He slammed the doors behind him, starting the jeep without the pause to rest his forehead on the steering wheel that this whole idiotic rom-com narrative, and the sucking hole in his chest, demanded. 

He had never expected, was the thing. He’d never expected and never held out for, and it turned out that didn’t help any when it was handed over and then taken away, the whole exchange colored with guilt and shame and all the things he’d been hoping to avoid in the first place. 

Fuck. _Fuck_. 

The ice cream was hidden behind the frozen peas and still despite his sneakiness half of it was gone; but sometimes cliches were there for a reason and sometimes it was necessary and Stiles grabbed a spoon to go with it, kicked off his sneakers by the hall closet and stomped up the stairs. 

"Fuck you," he said around the spoon, when he pushed open the door. How the hell did he get here so fast?

"You wanted casual," Derek said, straightening up. "You said you wanted - "

"Because it’s what _you_ wanted!” Stiles said, brandishing the spoon like that would stop Derek stepping closer, crowding in. 

"I’m starting to wonder," Derek said, taking the spoon, taking the carton, setting them on Stiles’ desk, "if you have any idea what I want. If I messed up thinking I knew what _you_ do.” His hands were cold when they slipped under Stiles’ shirt to rest on his hips. 

"I don’t want casual, I never wanted - " Stiles said, swallowing around something tight in his throat. "I don’t want to pretend you didn’t say it." 

"Don’t pretend," Derek said, leaning forward so he could press the words against the skin just in front of Stiles’ ear. "I do, Stiles, I _do_.”


	5. Handyman

Derek is sitting on the floor of his loft, head in his hands, taking deep steadying breaths and keeping his eyes determinedly trained on the base of the nearest pillar and not anything above ankle height. 

Seriously, fuck his life. 

A pair of battered sneakers shuffle into view and Derek runs through all the swear words he knows in his head. 

"Derek, man, you okay?" 

"Fine," he says through gritted teeth. Starts again. Alphabetical order. 

"Your mouth says fine, but your eyes - are not actually looking at me, so I have no idea what they’re saying, which I’ll admit is kind of a concern. Are you having a wolfy moment?" 

There was a point at which not everything out of Stiles’ mouth sounded like a euphemism for masturbation. Derek remembers it fondly. 

"Have you got a headache? Do wolves get - seriously if you’ve got a headache we don’t have to hammer." Derek chokes out a tiny noise, involuntary, but it doesn’t slow Stiles down at all. "I guess I was hammering pretty hard, and I don’t want to do anything you’re not into. I’m fine with a hammering-free zone." The warm tone in his voice echoes the grin he’s no doubt wearing. "We can always just cuddle." 

"You’re fucking with me," Derek says, incredulous, and forgets himself enough to look up. Past the battered sneakers, the ripped jeans that were already baggy even before Stiles wrapped himself in a tool belt - for ‘authenticity’ - that’s been slowly pulling his pants lower on his hips all afternoon. Now, with the golden evening sun staining the floor there’s a thin line of pale skin and a black band of underwear visible under his too-tight shirt, and Derek can’t swallow past what the line of hair disappearing beneath the waistband does to him. He stares for longer than he should, hands aching to touch, and then finally tears his eyes away, flicking them up to meet Stiles’. 

He has no idea what it is Stiles sees in his eyes, but the widening of his smile is _beautiful_. 

"I’m not fucking with you," Stiles says, honest and happy, stupidly obviously happy, “but I’d like to.”


	6. Sterek Cooking

Derek learned to read in a house full of wolves, a house full of _family_ , of fights and teasing and loud yelling laughter, the thunder of feet on the stairs, the slamming of doors. He learned to read in chaos, to sink between the lines and lose himself following the narrative thread until he blinked and it was time for school, dinner, bed. It always took him time to resurface and anchor himself back into the real world.

He learned to filter, to ignore, and where it worked for a house full of wolves it’s been impossible in the almost-silences since. It’s genuinely a shock when he’s startled out of his book by Stiles landing half in his lap, squirming and twisting himself around until he can kneel up on the couch cushions, his bony kneecaps digging in to the side of Derek’s thigh.

"What?" he asks, blinking, startled and story-blurred, shocked that he’d managed to relax that far when he wasn’t alone.

"Peter’s back," Stiles says, scowling darkly in the direction of the kitchen. "He’s _cooking_.”

"He does that," Derek says dryly.

"I don’t trust it," Stiles says. "What if something drops off him and falls in?"

"I’m not a zombie, Stiles," Peter calls.

"I don’t _eat_ it,” Derek says, at the same time.

"Still not trying to poison you," Peter says in the kitchen.

"Still not giving you the chance," Derek says.

"Huh," Stiles says. He sits back on his heels and regards Derek thoughtfully. Derek ignores him and tries to go back to his book, but the fragile peace from before is elusive, impossible to recapture with Peter’s presence.

"You’ve eaten things I’ve cooked for you," Stiles says, thoughtful.

"I trust you," Derek says. Stiles gapes at the side of his face like he’s said something impossible, something shocking, and Derek shrugs. It’s not like he doesn’t show it; lets Stiles have a key to his apartment, eats things Stiles gives him, relaxes enough to let down all his guards like he hasn’t since _home_ , like he hasn’t since _family_.

He turns his head and meets Stiles’ wide eyes.

"I trust you," he says again, but it’s not quite the word he means.


	7. Deliveryman Sterek

Derek was still breathing but he wished he wasn’t.

That wasn’t out of the ordinary but it was usually more abstracted, not so immediate, involved a little less blood.

"Are you," he gritted out, teeth clenching as he rode out another wave of pain, "are you here to kill me?"

"Really not," the kid at the edge of the clearing said absently, tapping at the glass of an old-fashioned egg timer like that’d make the sand inside fall any faster. He was familiar somehow that Derek couldn’t place, pale and long-limbed, jeans pale blue and sweatshirt faded red like a photograph left in sunlight. "I don’t _kill_ people.”

Derek didn’t have the breath to argue with him, the flesh of his chest knitting together just fast enough not to kill him but no faster. He cast a glance at the modified lacrosse stick that leaned against a tree, at the thin blade that curved from the end of it.

The kid followed his gaze and grimaced.

"Yeah, no, I know that looks bad but it’s kinda traditional. I don’t _kill_ , I’m more of a - delivery service. Wrapping all the souls up in a neat little bow.” He stepped closer as his eyes flicked down to Derek’s chest; close enough that Derek could see the constellation of moles that dotted his skin. It clicked into place then - he’d seen this kid before, down the hall from his uncle’s room in long term care, long eyelashes always resting on his cheeks. Maybe they’d always been closed because even as a werewolf Derek knew eyes shouldn’t look like that, solid white from edge to edge.

"So you’re here to deliver me," Derek said, and it was a horrible sort of relief for the moment before the kid shook his head.

"I’m here to maintain the integrity of the timeline," he said, and waved the egg timer like that meant anything. "Werewolf healing always messes us up, and I - " he grimaces again, and it’s a horribly human expression that Derek wished he didn’t know. "I have to make sure you don’t get there in time."

“ _Laura_ ,” Derek breathed, and the noise that came out of him when he tried to push himself up was hideous. The kid pushed him back down, hand unnaturally strong against Derek’s shoulder, and then for a second he cupped Derek’s cheek. His hand was cold.

"I’m sorry for your loss," he said gently before he disappeared.


	8. Pie baker Sterek

You don’t have a history like Derek’s and get to have normal kinks. Ropes, whips, leather - okay. Maybe a _little_ leather. But he’s lived through enough that most of it leaves him cold, brings up bad memories; he’s lived through enough that most _people_ leave him cold. So it’s just perfect that it’s the sight of Stiles’ long fingers pushing pastry into the edges of a pie tin that has him swallowing hard, clearing his throat with a quick flickering look around the room to make sure he’s unobserved. He pushes away from the counter and crosses back into the living room, drops onto the couch and stares fixedly at the TV like it holds the answers to the universe.

"You okay, son?" the sheriff asks, eyeing him over the top of his paper, and Derek gives him a sharp nod.

(Apparently he has the occasional dinner with the Stilinskis, now. Apparently that’s a thing.)

"Okay," Stiles says, appearing in the doorway with a sanity-destroying smudge of flour across his cheek, "we’ve got the makings for apple, cherry, possibly banana cream - although if we’re going down that route, dad, you’re having a piece approximately the width of your pinkie, so get used to that one right now - so state your preferences or forever hold your whining."

"Cherry," the sheriff says quickly, like he’s anticipating some competition in getting it out - it makes sense. He’s related to Stiles. Derek just shrugs awkwardly.

"No preference?" Stiles asks. "Come on, Derek, what’s your favourite? No judging, I swear."

Derek licks his lips, and if Stiles’ eyes drop to his mouth as he does so, if there’s an uptick in his pulse there’s no way in hell Derek will ever acknowledge it.

"I like strawberry rhubarb," he says, shrugs one shoulder ‘cos it’s not important, definitely not enough so for the little hitch in Stiles’ breathing, right there.

The next day’s an early shift for the sheriff so he heads up early, while Stiles and Derek are still propped up against each other on the couch.

"Don’t stay up too late," he says, and there’s something in his eyebrows when he looks at Derek that for the sake of his sanity he’s not going to analyse. Stiles’ warm weight at his side is lax and comfortable, and Derek’s almost convinced himself he’s asleep, almost convinced himself to edge out from underneath him (in another couple of minutes, maybe just a couple more) when Stiles abruptly breaks the silence.

"So," he says, shifting himself upright, turning to face the side of Derek’s head. "Strawberry rhubarb."

'Yes' is what Derek intends to say. Gets his mouth all ready for it, only with a quick and graceless movement there's a warm mouth pressed against his. (The word slips out anyway, somewhere around the edges of it).

"What," is what he eventually manages, and the flatness of it’d hold more weight if Stiles hadn’t somehow edged himself into Derek’s lap, under Derek’s hands. If Derek’s fingers weren’t tightening a little rhythmically, reflexively, against Stiles’ hips.

"You don’t express preferences around me much," Stiles says, low and soft. "I like you telling me what you want."

"Is it okay if it’s you," Derek says, his voice worn away at the edges. "It’s mostly you."

(He assumes there’s a yes hidden among the gently sweet noises Stiles presses into his mouth).


	9. "Last time I ask you for a favor!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HSDSS

"What the hell," Stiles says faintly, staring out into the yard, thumbs tucked in his belt because pinning his hands down is basically the only way he’s managed to get the criminal element to take him seriously.

The ball of mud and twigs and the occasional flash of Adventure Time print, the ball of crazy hair and tangles that might once upon a time have been his daughter beams up at him.

"Hey daddy!" she yells, and the splash of mud all across her cheek doesn’t diminish the brightness of her smile, not even a little.

"Hi peanut," he says, on automatic, "you had a good day?"

"We really did," Scott’s voice says from behind him, and Stiles whirls around to glare. To glare, and to point accusingly at his best friend slash emergency babysitter, who’s just about as mud-covered as Claud is. The guy behind him rubbing a towel over his damp curls is presumably the Isaac that Scott had come out to visit, and Stiles doesn’t hesitate to include him in the glare right alongside Scott. He quails a little.

"Hey, Deputy Stilinski," he says, awkward but polite. "We kinda thought you’d be a little later, sorry."

"And, what, you thought you could hide the evidence?" He cuts off any response with an upraised hand and goes to reclaim his daughter, mentally cataloguing the contents of the truck. If he’s lucky - and he really hopes today will be the exception there - there’ll be a couple of oversized evidence bags he can put around Claud’s booster seat, because he seriously just got the cruiser detailed and after the lasagne incident his dad’s going to make him pay.

"I was being a wolf," Claud explains happily as he picks leaves out of her hair.

"I bet you make an amazing wolf," he tells her, and she almost blows out his ear drum howling directly into his ear.

Stiles glares at Scott as he passes him on the porch, walking into the living room to pick up Claud’s spiderman bag and the blobby brown and black drawings that he guesses are wolves, Claud shedding garden detritus every time she moves. (She’s a Stilinski. There’s a lot of shedding).

"Seriously Scott," Stiles half yells, heading for the front door, "you can forget about the tickets. This is the last time I ask you for a fav- uh."

The front door was yanked open as he approached it, and standing on the door step is possibly the sexiest man Stiles has ever seen. Subtlety has never been his strong suit so there’s really no disguising the slow up and down look he gives the man, taking in the muscled frame, leather jacket, gorgeous hazel eyes.

"Wow," he says faintly.

"Who the hell are you," the guy says, and then his eyes lift to look past Stiles into the wreckage of the living room, the mud that’s been trailed through it. "And what the _hell_ have you done to my house?”


	10. "You want me to do what?” sterek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuation of previous chapter

"Look," Stiles says, doing his best to keep his voice steady and hitching Claud up a little in his arms, "I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate, you _know_ that.”

Derek runs a hand through bed-rumpled hair, his sweatpants barely clinging to his hips, and he’s looking at Claud like she’s an unexploded bomb which is both unfair and only accurate like 30% of the time, besides. Stiles looks at her too, as the thing least likely to utterly destroy his mental state, watches as she focuses on industriously peeling his fingers away from her arm, occasionally grunting under her breath and muttering something about castles. (Derek’s yard had inexplicably sprouted a sandbox, two weeks back. They haven’t mentioned it).

"I can’t - " he starts, but Stiles bulldozes right by it like he didn’t say a word.

"Isaac will be back in two hours tops, and Scott can be by maybe a half hour after that so I swear she won’t cut much into your morning routine. She’s got apples and goldfish and a couple of juice boxes in her bag, plus colouring and a couple of her favourite DVDs, just put one of those on and you’ll barely even have to interact."

Derek’s eyebrows remain unconvinced.

"Please, man," Stiles says, too busy to be ashamed of so openly begging. "There’s no one else I trust."

Derek’s eyes shoot up to meet his, clearly surprised and weirdly vulnerable.

"You trust me."

Weird intonation but it’s obviously a question, and for a second Stiles just blinks at him, mind blank.

"Um," he says. "Obviously?" He puts Claud down without looking away from Derek’s face, and her happy crowing makes a beeline for the sandbox. "Sorry, you thought I’d have left her with Isaac if you weren’t here? Isaac ‘I am the Wolfman, coo coo cachoo’ Lahey? Isaac ‘I swear the stains will all come out’? Are you kidding me right now?"

"I didn’t - "

"You’re an - " _idiot_ , Stiles means to say. _Would_ say, if he didn’t suddenly have six feet of solid flesh pressed up against him, if Derek’s tongue hadn’t introduced itself abruptly and not in the least bit politely to Stiles’. He’s pulling back before Stiles’ hands have had time to do more than twitch at his sides, before he’s had time to process let alone enthusiastically react. “Idiot,” he breathes, some kind of reflex, and Derek flinches back.

"You should," he clears his throat, tugs Claud’s bag from Stiles’ lax hand. "You should get to work." And without another glance in Stiles’ direction he heads to the back yard, to Stiles’ already sand-plastered and evilly grinning daughter. If Stiles had time -

"We are _talking_ about this later, buddy,” he yells, slamming the door of the cruiser hard behind him, but when he picks up Claud that evening Derek is nowhere to be seen.


	11. "There’s something I’ve been meaning to say…”

"No."

He says it flatly, no hook of an uptick at the end for Derek to inveigle an argument under. He continues tugging at the door handle like he can do any better than Derek had; Derek had been bleeding out at the time, so maybe - and wow, that is _not_ a train of thought Stiles wants to go down.

"Stiles - "

"No! No death bed confessions, okay, nothing you wouldn’t say normally, because if you’re giving up on - "

He’s cut off by a pained noise, by the sound of liquid spattering against the floor, and he doesn’t want to turn around and see the black goopy evidence that Derek might not make it through this time.

"If you die I swear to god I will _kick your ass_.”

Derek huffs out a laugh that’s halfway to a pained groan, and when Stiles shoots a glance at him he’s curled around the bullet hole in his stomach, his face bleached bone-white against the darkness.

Stiles turns and yanks at the door again, the door handle biting into the palm of his hand.

"Come on," he says, "come on Scott."

"Stiles, I - " Derek says, his voice barely carrying, and Stiles slams his foot into the door as much to block out the rest of the sentence as anything.

"Come _on_!”

And then, like a fucking _miracle_ , there’s an answering clang.

*

There’s drama - running, carrying, speeding, breaking and entering, burning, screaming, healing. And then there’s all the other stuff, the behind the scenes things that they never show in action movies. There’s a little crying, some rehydrating, a seriously long overdue piss. It’s forever and no time at all and Stiles is finally tucked between faintly musty sheets that are probably overdue a wash, pulled up tight against Derek’s chest. He’s probably imagining the warm spot against his lower back, the place where Derek’s still healing.

Stiles threads his fingers between Derek’s and feels like his lungs can fill properly for the first time all night.

"What were you gonna say?" he asks the darkness, quiet enough that he doesn’t have to torture himself if there’s no answer. (He would anyway, but it’d be no one’s fault but his own).

"Matches," Derek mumbles, already breathing sleep-slow. "For your kit."

Because the lighter hadn’t worked. Because he hadn’t been able to burn the wolfsbane. Because that’s the kind of shit that happens when Stiles tries to prepare for the worst.

"Right," Stiles says, blankly. He’s not sure what he’d expected. "Yeah, right, good idea."

"G’sleep," Derek says.

"Right," Stiles says.

*

He wakes up to cold sheets, to a coffee on the bedside table that’s barely warm.

He’d do the self-indulgent thing, the blanket burrito of misery thing, but his sheets needed a wash possibly a month ago and at this point there’s a possibility they’d be a danger to his health. Plus what kind of asshole would he be to worry about the lack of deathbed confessions when there’s a lack of deathbed, right there, waiting to be celebrated?

Stiles throws back the comforter and snatches at the piece of paper that flutters to the floor, almost rolling himself out of bed when he strains to reach it.

Derek’s writing is weirdly pretty. It’s one of the things Stiles delights in teasing him about; that Stiles delights in.

 _Love you, dumbass_ , it says.


	12. "Where the fuck did that clown come from?"

"So… killing the president, I’m guessing?"

The blindfold is scratchy against his face. He wishes they’d taken him up on the offer of his tie; he can’t afford silk but it’d still be softer against his delicate skin, plus offer the incidental bonus of the possibility of daylight around the edges of it. Even the hint of a direction’d be good.

"Killing the president, and then blame the werewolves, obviously, because someone always buys into that bullshit nature over nurture vicious creatures thing, despite all evidence to the fluffy puppies. My best friend, man, he’s like the werewolf version of a Pomeranian."

"Shut him up," someone says. Shotgun. Inflectionless Midwestern states, too carefully articulated to be anything other than practiced. Stiles turns his head in that direction and offers his friendliest smile, in case the guy’s looking.

"Better men’ve tried," he says, doesn’t even flinch at the distinctive crick of metal against metal, doesn’t even flinch at the cold circle kissed up against his forehead. They want to know what he knows, they _have_ to know what he knows, he’s good, he’s good. “So you guys are hunters, right? Ex-hunters. Too legit to quit. Or rather quit than legit? I dunno, there’s a rhyme in there somewhere, give me a second and I’ll - “

"Where the _fuck_ did that clown come from?”

This time his smile is genuine. The pressure against his forehead disappears and he’s curling into himself before they can react, feet slammed against angles in the footwell and braced as best he can as the shots start cracking, as something slams into the side of the car hard enough almost to rock it off his wheels. It’s a crazy couple of minutes before he’s the last man standing - sitting - splayed in the back seat with his hands tied behind him. He starts laughing when the door clicks open beside him, quiet and delicate and polite.

"Hey Derek," he says. Gentle fingers press a penknife into his palm, linger too long before pulling away. "You’re under arrest."

"Again?" His voice is muffled a little by the hideous clown mask he wears, too pretty a face to ever manage unmemorable. "How many times is that?"

"Not enough," Stiles says, because it’s easier to be honest when you can’t see the reaction, double-bagged plausible deniability.

There’s a moment of silence; the weird rubbery flopping of discarded clown. Stiles turns into it, hopeful, but Derek’s mouth always presses against the hinge of his jaw and Stiles still doesn’t know how he tastes.


End file.
